Regular-life interlude

I don't do much describing of our regular weekends here, but I have friends who are doing this at the moment, and they came to see us over the weekend and very nicely described everything we did. So if you're interested, here was last weekend:

Friday night (we are at the end)
Saturday
Sunday

Not every summer weekend is so action packed, but trampolines, BBQs, tresse and some kind of visit with friends and/or family generally feature in there at least once. Also slugs, more prominently that I'd have ever imagined.

Japan - Day 2

In Japan in summer, the sun rises at 4.15am. We did not rise so early. In fact, even though we went to bed a good 11 hours before breakfast ended the next day, we barely made it in time.

After hurriedly eating, we set off for the nearby jigokudani - Hell Valley. It wasn't the most hellish Hell Valley we've ever seen, but still quite steamy and stinky.

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I spotted a sign that seemed to say fire forest walk, which sounded like lots of fun... only then we realised it was actually a warning about forest fires. D'oh.

We did do a short walk through the forest though, along a hot stream.

After a nice foot soak, we headed off to a reconstructed Ainu village museum. Lunch was traditional Ainu food - acorn noodles with deer and vegetables, and a kind of sweet potato pancake. Despite this being very yummy, the kids opted for plain rice.

The village was interesting - though had a looong way to go in terms of animal cruelty. Dogs and bears in small cages might be authentic, but are really not necessary.

 Hair clips, on the other hand, may be necessary but are not really authentic.

Ditto for crocs.

Lukan with his godfather, Shabolz.

We thought we might stop for a swim in the sea on the way back, but driving along the coast road we were quickly reminded that Japanese shorelines are often concrete blocks and ports rather than beaches. Oh well.

The sunset was quite lovely. 

Back at the hotel it was onsen time then dinner time - where we discovered that the buffet was exactly the same as the night before. A different menu wouldn't have changed much for our kids though; all they wanted anyway was edamame, rice and ice cream.

Then it was back into the bath for the nightly fireworks (they weren't on the first night as it was extremely windy). Well, you didn't have to be in the onsen to see them, but Shabolz was taking the kids and I figured it's not every day you get the chance to see fireworks over a lake while soaking in a steaming hot, nicely scented, rooftop public bath.

Just before heading to the onsen, I'd actually discovered it was forbidden to take photos. Pffft. I mean, how could I miss such a fabulous Facebook opportunity?

There was a bit of noise again from the men's bath next door, but it was easy enough to lie back and ignore it. Well, for me - Shabolz had a harder time of it. He turned his back on the 3 kids for a minute only to turn around again to a full on shower hose water fight. When I asked the kids later who started it, the response was, well it just kind of happened naturally.

Afterwards, doubly clean now, it was bed time.

Japan - Day 1.5

Seriously, the last time I posted was in April? And between my summary of last summer and now, when the next summer already feels over, there were only 3 posts in total? Life... slow down already!

Not that there's been so much to blog about. I mean, I've done the "I hate nagging my kids all the time" posts, and so even though I'm still nagging, I can't really write more about that. You may have gathered also that I'm prone to fretting about my parenting abilities... the issues haven't really changed, same old same old, nothing new to write about there either. I've spent a lot of time in the garden too, but again - blogged that already, a lot.

We have had some excellent holidays though. So, in an effort to keep the blog alive, but mainly as a way of remembering our trips in more detail, I thought I'd record them here.

First up, Japan, given that it's the freshest.

So then. Japan. Hokkaido, actually - a place we'd both wanted to go hiking for a long time. I'd imagined going when the kids were a bit older, but then we found out our friends Shabolz and Yoko, with their son Andy and Shabolz's parents, were going this year for their family holiday. We asked if we could tag along. They didn't say no. Then we proposed an itinerary, including a number of hikes we wanted to do. They didn't say no. And even better, Yoko booked all the hotels and found cheap flights and cheap car rental, including for us. They are keepers, for sure.

We left early on a Saturday morning and some 15 hours later arrived in Tokyo at lunchtime on Sunday. (No Lukan spews on the plane, but then he suddenly vomited in baggage collection. I managed to whip out a bag in time though.) This was 1 hour later than planned, which meant we only had an hour to go through immigration, get our luggage and then check in for the flight to Hokkaido. We were very relieved to make it to the check-in queue around 30 minutes before the flight departure... but despite making ourselves known about which flight we were supposed to take, we had to stay at the end of the queue. 10 minutes went by and we were still in the queue... another 10 minutes went by and we were still in the queue... 5 minutes went by and we got to the check-in counter... and somehow we still made the flight. Phew!

Bonus - a Mt Fuji sighting!

90 minutes later we were in Sapporo, where we had to go through a bit of a kerfaffle to get the car. Nothing major, just the document-heavy and time-consuming Japanese process. Sardinia two weeks before - keys and one piece of paper in 5 minutes. Japan - keys and a whole huge dossier after a good 40 minutes.

But actually it was lucky we could hire a car at all. Just over two weeks before, C had realized that our driving licenses are not valid in Japan: he needed a translation of his, which would take 3 weeks, and I needed an international license, which required the submission of a real photo and the sending of the license to me. You got some fam-lee that can help ya, luv? was the response when I called about our predicament to ask if please, pretty please I couldn't submit everything electronically, including a photo? Luckily I do indeed have family: my lovely brother responded to my please, pretty please by printing out all the necessary documents, going to the NRMA and sending me my international license. C also begged for his translation to go a bit faster, and got it in time too.

Anyway, we finally got the cars and headed off towards our first hotel, on Lake Toya:

We hadn't had lunch yet but figured we'd eat on the way. Only, the way was all forest. Forest, forest, forest. But there was a scenic view point with a restaurant and happily, Japanese scenic-view-point food is edible. And especially happily for Lukan, who hours before had said he wanted edamame and only edamame (steamed soy beans), the restaurant had a vending machine selling edamame.

And so begins what would come to be called the great edamame shortage of 2014

From the scenic view point it was only another 20 minutes to the hotel - which was even more scenic, being beautiful and right on the lake.

It was very windy, and so very wavy.

Because natural beauty can always be improved by kitch. And noise. Good grief, this boat headed out every couple of hours with a blare of music and babble... and next to no passengers.

The hotel had a rooftop onsen so it wasn't long before the yukatas and slippers were on...

... and we were happily soaking.

My soak was slightly disturbed by some rowdy children in the next door men's bath.

Then it was dinner in the hotel restaurant (edamame, rice and ice cream for the kids)...

Love, love, love the Japanese custom of eating in your hotel-provided dressing gown.

... and, after a long Sat-unday, bed.